great guys for this series. favourites are Howard and Rob. not many token DiSers on it this year, just Ruby.

i felt like they're trying really hard at an early stage this year. if you look at last series' first week showstopper the most outre design will be someone cutting their cake into a heart shape or something. this time someone's was 'inspired by Gaudi'

If anyone shows any kind of personality then you cool indie kids just scoff at them like you're choking on a dick. Shut your dick holster and get back to watching Masterchef you ugly clit faced dickhead.

"This aspirational bread lust makes me want to fly a fucking plane into the old blue last and kill all of Dalston, you fuckers think that yeast just does all the work for you, a bit of slap and tickle on the fucking dough and it will rise up, put itself in the oven while the baker that shows any signs of indie bedwetting personality tugs at their cardigan buttons and snorts smugly, you are all fuckers and I wish you all irrirable bowel explosion syndrome, fuck off and watch hell's kitchen"

I instantly disliked Toby but found myself routing for him when he started doing badly. Think he's definitely a better baker than Ruby, but just lost it, especially on the salt. Think Ali will learn from his mistakes and make the last 5.

Definitely supporting Howard. He's great.

All of Ruby's efforts looked dreadful. 10,000 people entered and she made the last 13! Bob the builder was a bit annoying as well.

one thing i've noticed, and have checked this over every episode since about midway series 2, is that the contestants wear the exact same clothes on day 1 and 2. assumed this was because it's actually just 1 day but they've left stuff to set in there before. makes me wonder why they have no change. it might not be their own clothes, but what the GBBO stylists have given them, maybe? weird either way.

there's almost no progression of skills, everyone just churns out dog's dinner after dog's dinner and then someone randomly wins. also the judges are laughable. a nice old lady who writes about cakes and some scouser with gelled hair who looks like he just got back from corfu. great stuff.

When she wanted to use some of his surface and he said that he needed it.

My main contestant hatred is when they say that they are winging it or whatever when they have been planning for the last few weeks/months. That speccy student Scot did it last time and this time it's Ruby. Fuck off twats.

How on earth Paul and Mary keep falling for her ‘it’s really bad’ preface to every show stopper, SHE’S DOING IT TO LOWER YOUR GOD DAMNED EXPECTATIONS. And when she isn’t saying she didn’t have time to practice because she had exams, she’s saying it’s because she got a new kitten.

the combination of mousse, sponge and cream looks revolting,,,why can't they make NICE things?

so hoping Ruby would be kicked off but banana girl was the one to leave... Kimberley better win, if Ruby does I am going to hurl something at the TV. also psst I am in my new job and have lasted a full 2 days before coming on here, good huh?

Her show stopper last week was awful and got star baker. Its infuriating. I bet Ruby is insufferable as a friend. It’s always about her, no matter what happens. The sort of person who’d burst into tears if you told her you had cancer and you’d end up having to console her for two hours.

I did Philosophy at undergraduate and MA level and there was no Wittgenstein to be seen even in modules were he should obviously be a major focal point. I'd guess that at least half the people I studied with don't know who he is, which ACTUALLY speaks volumes.

but – and maybe this just reflects my own social bubble – I honestly don’t think I’ve seen much misogynistic abuse of any of the contestants, save people claiming Ruby was flirting with Paul to get ahead and that arse Blanc farting on Twitter.
I also think Ruby dramatically overplays the abuse the other contestants received in order to suggest a kind of general sexism – it seems much more the case that people disliked her in particular. For my part, her constantly putting herself down to the point of sheer boredom, despite winning star baker three times and clearly being capable was infuriating. I don’t think loathing obsequiousness is sexist, and I’m not convinced people are only seeing that in Ruby because she’s a woman.

she'll cook some utter bullshit, finish 30 mins before everyone else because her effort was so half-arsed, adn stand around complaining about how slow everyone is. Then when the judges pan her plate of shite she's just all "nah, it was fantastic, they're idiots."

I didn't see the sort of stuff she's talking about either, but I'm just assuming it's because I didn't really get into any big searches on line or anything, or follow a bunch of complete tools in FB or Twitter.

But I've certainly seen what she mentioned about Kimberley in other places before. And a bunch of feminists on my Twitter feed RT'd it with a general 'yeah!' so hey ho.

but then again, I've largely been off social media for the last month or two. Quite liked her myself, although not sure she always took criticism on the chin quite as well as she could have.

Would agree that the reason for my dislike of Ruby is about the constant self-deprecation rather than anything else. Happy to take her word for it that it's real rather than any kind of ploy that she was using to downplay expectations, but hopefully she's learnt something about herself from her experience on the Bakeoff and people's perceptions of her.

...there's still been a lot of meanness towards the contestants. Don't know if you think it's fair or not for reasonably innocent people to have to withstand a bit of a public slanging just because they wanted to do some baking on TV.

Or maybe we just assume that folk on TV's feelings are less important than others in our public/social-media assessments of them. I don't know.

a) they did not edit the program, they did not take the camer footage of themselves, which is edited to create whatever drama there is
b) they are not talentless people who are only famous for being in the media, they are famous for being contestents in a skillful and highly competative and tense cooking competition, baking like that is emotional as it is not as easy to control (or recover) as a bunch of ingrediants in a pan on the stove.

Not going to wade into the rest of the debate except to say that the only thing I found worthy of criticising was Hollywood's attitude and general demeanour towards Ruby which I found deeply unsettling. This might just be because of the revelations around his personal life recently and I don't think Ruby seemed like she was doing anything to encourage this.

SHe's a young wmoan, who doesn't have a huge experience of being filmed for TV. She's in a high profile competition, so naturally she'll be vervous and hesitatnt and I'd take a bit of her self depracation over misplaced arrogance any day. You can't help but feel that if she wasn't so stunningly pretty people would be a little less quick to be pass remarkable. If I was her I'd be going RAG right about now.

the thinly veiled has been repeatedly watching that American wedding cake show on Food Network loads since we got cable and some of the things on there have been incredible...! The Bake Off girls didn't have a chance to do something jaw dropping in four hours, though thought they all made a decent effort against the odds. So, really it's the programme's fault for not allowing them to deliver stuff that's worthy of previous years.

When twitter erupts in a hatefest over a bloody baking show, perhaps that's a sign to turn the internet off. It's like discovering how to split the atom and destroy everything in a twenty mile radius, give people a twitter login and their first instinct it to be an utter cunt about everything.

understandable coping mechanism given the pressure.
Frances' face thing was quite strange/unfortunate for her. Just looked like she was shocked and disagreed EVERY SINGLE TIME there was any criticism and the camera cut to her.
Frances winning - meh
Was there more vitriol, misogyny etc than previous years on the interwebs, probably, maybe idk. Think the contestants were also more annoying than normal this year. Like they had all the annoying bases covered - self-deprecation, smug face etc